Since the advent of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, the production of personal data has surged, with 90% of the world’s personal data generated by individuals in the past two years alone. Currently, an individual produces approximately 146GB of data daily through interactions with around 30 applications, encompassing communication, work, content consumption, eCommerce, and more.

While this surge in data generation provides convenience and personalized experiences, it also results in most data being controlled by a few entities, with minimal transparency regarding its security, usage, or beneficiaries. As industries such as gaming and AI continue to advance rapidly, data has transitioned from merely enhancing user experience to becoming the cornerstone of the entire ecosystem.

CARV is one of the pioneering projects in the AI revolution, developing an incentive-aligned infrastructure that redefines the internet, centering on individual digital interactions. Let’s take a detailed look at their ecosystem!

CARV Protocol

The CARV Protocol is a modular data layer designed to facilitate data exchange and value distribution in the gaming and AI sectors. It supports end-to-end data flow processes, including data verification, identity authentication, storage, processing, model training, and value distribution. With the CARV Protocol, individuals can own, control, verify, and monetize their data, ensuring privacy, ownership, and control are maintained by users, and paving the way for a future where data generates value for everyone.

The CARV Protocol empowers users by giving them control over their data, allowing secure and private information sharing while participating in the revenue generated from their data usage. For businesses, it offers access to high-quality, privacy-preserving, and regulatory-compliant user data, enhancing their operations. From an infrastructure perspective, the CARV Protocol supports the entire data lifecycle, ensuring data monetization and value distribution are decentralized, integrated, privacy-focused, and regulatory-compliant.

The CARV Protocol Architecture

The CARV Protocol features a modular design, managing the end-to-end data lifecycle across various layers, with components within each layer seamlessly integrated:

• Identity Layer: Authenticates users through both traditional (web2) and blockchain (web3) mechanisms, aggregated under the CARV ID (ERC-7231). It integrates identities and data via CARV Link, Oracle, and other data verification services.

• Storage Layer: Offers a flexible data storage system, organizing data based on cost considerations and duration of persistence.

• Computation & Training Layer: Utilizes a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) cluster to confidentially process data and train AI models, with outcomes and TEE attestation relayed to the execution layer.

• Execution Layer: Built on a consensus foundation, it interprets data consumers’ needs and allocates rewards according to the results of processing and verification activities.

• Verification Layer: Composed of community verifiers, tasked with validating the TEE attestation to confirm its secure and accurate operation within the TEE.

CARV Verifier Nodes

Verifier nodes are lightweight nodes managed by the community, playing a crucial role in maintaining the protocol’s integrity and enhancing its trustworthiness and security. These nodes primarily check TEE attestations on-chain, ensuring the reliability of results and the maintenance of user data privacy.

Incorporating community-operated verifier nodes is essential to safeguard the security, decentralization, and privacy of the entire data flow. These nodes scrutinize outcomes at each protocol layer, ensuring integrity and compliance with established standards. Currently, they focus on verifying results from the data processing and AI model training layers. Computations and model training are conducted within Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) clusters to protect user data privacy. The outcomes are then recorded on the blockchain, accompanied by TEE attestation to verify that the processes are secure and private, thus facilitating the equitable redistribution of data value among various stakeholders.

To prevent system manipulation and ensure fair distribution of data value, third-party verification of TEE attestations is essential. This drives the active pursuit of community participation to strengthen the protocol by operating verifier nodes.

While a single honest node can detect fraudulent activity, achieving significant enforcement against misbehaving TEE nodes and protecting user data requires that at least half of the nodes operate honestly. Therefore, establishing a decentralized network of community nodes is crucial not only for securing the protocol but also for its scalability.

Blast Has Released Node-as-a-Service for CARV

Verifiers can be operated by anyone to validate results for personal use. However, only authorized verifiers with a License Key are permitted to participate in on-chain consensus and earn rewards. 

Delegation improves the network by utilizing the verifier node license key (NFT) by delegating their NFT to Nodes-as-a-Service (NaaS) providers. In return, Delegators receive $CARV from the reward pool. CARV is forming partnerships with leading NaaS providers, enabling the delegation of license keys for node management on behalf of the license holders.

Therefore, we are thrilled to introduce a new feature for CARV builders: Node-as-a-Service! This feature allows users to host their nodes on one of the top-performing infrastructure platforms in the Web3 space, leveraging services that power some of the industry’s leading brands.

Deploying nodes is simplified with Blast’s user-friendly interface and automated setup processes, enabling quick and easy provisioning without requiring technical expertise. Our experienced engineering team, with over four years of experience and a substantial portfolio, operates RPC nodes for more than 41 blockchain networks and validators for over 50 networks, with a total value locked (TVL) exceeding $650 million.

If you are an active participant in the CARV ecosystem and interested in enhancing the synergy of blockchain and AI, explore Blast, follow our social channels, and get ready to deploy and manage your CARV nodes with us!

For support regarding dedicated nodes, our team of engineers is available 24/7 on the Bware Labs Discord server. Simply join the server via this invite link, get your “NaaS” role, and chat with one of our team members. We are more than happy to assist you in hosting and managing your CARV nodes.